Back to School!

In October before we left to visit my Grandpa, we held a training seminar and since we arrived back the end of January we have already held three more. It is not the school of Tyrannus in Ephesus but the hearts of the men and women who are being taught have the same passion to spread the Good News about the Lord Jesus throughout Asia.....and they have already taken the Gospel through four different provinces and to over 30 towns and villages here in this part of Asia.

Paul is sharing with this group of men and women – elders, pastors, bible teachers, ladies involved in children’s ministry and elder’s wives – about the importance of being in the Word, implanting it in their own hearts and letting it flow out from their hearts as they teach others.

It was three days,  from Monday until late Wednesday night this week,  packed full of study about doctrine, outlines, team teaching, the need for each other, forming strong ministry teams, discussion time about church planting and anything else on their hearts......and many other things. 

Behind the scenes were many ladies who were helping everything to go smoothly, who were cooking, making beds, cleaning.......and other women who were providing technical help with the Mp3 players, with the computers and power points and with printing study materials. Not to mention Wingwing who drove many hours to bring everyone here and who also brought in large quantities of meat, fish and vegetables from out in town. Paul had the job of making sure everything coordinated and enough food was ordered and this was huge. 

The men and women attending these training seminars have been taking their study time very seriously!

At the end of the day when we’d come back to our home and the evening meal was over,  some of them studied late into every night, only slept a few hours and then would be up again at 2:00 or 3:00am to continue studying. Our home became a hive of activity during the evenings of little groups here and there, discussing the Word with each other and of others finding their own corner to study the Word in and to write and to ponder. We had never seen the likes of it in our 25 years’ experience as missionaries.  

We made sure that there was coffee on 24 hours a day and kept lights on all night in the study areas so that they could come and go as they pleased.

One of the exercises we did with them to help them see the benefit of working together as a team was to get each of them to prepare a message on Acts 3:1-10, and then the ladies who work here in the office with us encoded all the information from their combined lessons into the computer to produce one joint lesson. They then took that lesson and compared it with their own original lesson to see how much more insight God had given them on that passage from the joint thoughts and understanding of their whole group together.

 

They were amazed and very pleased with the end result of their combined effort – so much so that when the elders and bible teachers from Cauyunan went back home, they continued to put into practise what they had learnt here and they set aside one whole day a week – sometimes going without lunch – to study diligently together as a team the book of Ephesians so that they could team-teach it to the church. And as a result they have seen a re-kindled passion for the Word growing in the hearts of the believers in Cauyunan and some who had become somewhat indifferent to spiritual things now look forward to gathering as a church each week because the fervour of their church leaders is becoming contagious.

When the church leaders from Cauyunan shared this news with us last month, we got teary-eyed and our hearts were very touched by what God is doing in their lives! And this month, they have even more news to share because the church leaders in Tumpagon and Limondà are following their lead and are also setting time aside weekly to come together as a leadership team and to discuss the scriptures and to learn from each other.

During these training seminars, we have been including a couple of the wives each time – so far 6 of the wives have attended and 4 more will be coming next month – and we have been encouraging the men to involve their wives in their personal study times and to see their wives as their number one disciple and themselves as their wives’ number one disciple as well. And we have been hearing some very sweet stories of how God is bonding these couples together more and more as they study the Word together and get more involved together in ministry.

Even the young people in Cauyunan are catching their leaders’ excitement to study the Word and the number of youth that are meeting together for Bible studies each week is growing! 

Meal times have been fun – people spread out everywhere at tables and on the floors and lively conversations – and we do our best to cook as much variety as we can for them.  The smallest group we have had at a meal for these training seminars so far has been 18 people and the biggest group has been 30 so it hasn’t been too enormous but still keeps us on our toes and means starting in the kitchen before the first rays of sun start to appear in the sky.

We believe this year, that these ‘school’ times in the Word, twice a month, are an undertaking that God has committed to us to host and to facilitate and to help teach. It is something that God laid on our hearts last year and He is helping us with more and more ideas on how to make these times increasingly beneficial.

Please pray for us to have great wisdom and to have hearts that continually grow in sensitivity to His voice and to the direction He is leading.  A friend shared Isaiah 41:10 with us yesterday and it is a beautiful thought to close this letter with:

Do not fear for I am with you; Do not anxiously look about you for I am your God; I will strengthen you, surely I will help you; Surely I will uphold You with My righteous right hand.

Back home in Lapoc.....!

Safely back in Lapoc! Praise God!!!!

We have slid back easily into a different ‘world’ which Lapoc really is compared to life in the West. Funny thing is though that this ‘world’ is so familiar to us that it all just seems normal when we get back here. How we praise God for refreshing our hearts and souls and minds through our time away, for the wonderful time with Grandpa and with many dear friends and co-workers in the work of the Gospel who we spent time with during our trip…..it was all so very special.

It will be another 7 weeks before we see sight of a town again so we stocked up on 7 weeks’ supply of groceries as we came through Cagayan and took Jubab to the orthodontist amongst other things.  Just an aside, I (Deb) had my bi-annual check-up which showed up active endometriosis and my right ovary is almost entirely occupied by a cyst so this will need some watching. I have some follow-up Doctor’s appointments at the end of March.

We also met up with Nayumi, Dondon’s widow, and she stayed with us overnight in Cagayan. We stayed up late that night talking, until we just couldn’t keep our eyes open anymore, and it was so good to see her. She told us that as the time has passed since Dondon’s death, the initial relief she felt that Dondon was no longer suffering and the numbness has been replaced with the painful grip of loneliness and the intense longing for his companionship and there are times the days seem very bleak to her. We were glad that we could spend time praying with her and reading the Word and comforting her and we are so glad that she is able to identify her feelings and talk about them and we know this in itself is a healthy part of her healing process.

The news about my Dad is not real clear yet but it appears that he has a cancer that can be treated with chemo in a tablet form so we are waiting for more news on this after his visit to the oncologist. All of your prayers and encouragements and thoughts of us have been the Lord’s outstretched hand to us during this very difficult time.

After packing up supplies and leaving the town behind, we made our way up to Lapoc, with a quick stop in Lantod on the way to see the progress on the church building and it is going amazingly well considering all the difficulty with the roads and the bad weather and the bridge being washed out making it very hard to get building materials on site.  One bridge was totally washed away in the recent typhoon as you can see from the photo below. 

This is the first obstacle we came to on the road home to Lapoc where you can see that the bridge was totally torn off its moorings and washed away.

The good news though is that there is an old bridge that was in existence a number of years before this one was built and it was still pretty intact. So light vehicles are able to cross and we are so thankful that we didn’t face any delays as we travelled.

The difficult thing is that heavy loads of cement and building materials all have to be shuttled across in small loads and transferred to another truck on the other side so you can imagine the huge job it is to get building materials up here now.

Thankfully, God’s plans and time table cannot be frustrated or hindered by any sort of obstacles and He has undertaken in amazing ways while we were away to help the team of guys that Paul had left in charge of the Lantod church building and in just a couple more weeks it should be finished and the believers there will have their own place to meet. It is so timely as the make-shift lean-to’s that they erected as temporary meeting places have been cold and leaking and very difficult venues to study the Word in and to worship in together.

Lantod is a place where three languages are spoken and Arabic is taught in the local school because of the strong Islam presence. People from all 3 of these people groups have come to the Lord and the Lord has established a small church there. This place is a key area needing special prayer cover. As  you pray for Lapoc and the ongoing battle for souls that is being waged here, please keep Lantod a high priority prayer point.

We have been able to touch base with the elders from Cauyunan, Tumpagon, Limonda, Anlagan, Lapoc and Tinaytayan and also with the missionary team from Kalamalamahan this past few days since we have been home and we have been touched and greatly blessed by their steadfastness and fervour for the Lord Jesus.  We have some wonderful stories to share with you but we’ll do that in our next update in a few days.

Here we are as we dropped into Lantod – arriving just before the rain – to see the nearly finished church and the guys just preparing to pour the cement floor. We were so thrilled to see this building standing where nothing had been before when we left.

Please pray that the believers in Lantod will very soon be meeting in this building and that this provision from the Lord for them will greatly encourage their hearts. Pray that they will be diligent and faithful to meet and to study the Word and to praise and to pray and that they will stand steadfast through the trials which are plenty.  And pray that in the three different people groups represented in this new church will have beautiful unity and will genuinely love and serve one another.

About two hours after this picture was taken we were driving down our driveway in Lapoc, hugging our team-mates, lugging bags and boxes up the steps and drinking in the Lapoc sights and sounds.

Our first evening back here ended perfectly with dinner together with our whole missionary team and seven other neighbour families who all brought food and soft drinks to welcome us home. Ben and Leonie’s baby Grace I think got the most cuddles as she was passed around and cooed over by everyone and she didn’t seem to mind all the attention!

Here are some other photos for you of our first day back. We will continue this story in our next update.  For now we better go and get an somewhat early night as this is our first quiet night to ourselves since we arrived. 

Jubab enjoying time with Yingying

Dinner together on our first night back

 

 

 

 

Bridge repair sign

Please Pray For Deb's Dad

Yesterday morning we woke up to some bad news. Grandpa, with tears, gently broke the news to us that my Dad has cancer in his kidneys. (Mom had called the evening before while we were out.) He has a 7 cm tumour in his left kidney and it has also spread to his right kidney and to the lymph nodes near his aorta. He will see a urologist in 2 weeks time and then most likely will have surgery to remove his left kidney and maybe part of his right kidney, followed by chemo.

Our first reaction was that we were devastated but as God has calmed our hearts and helped us to work through our initial shock we have come to realize that the prognosis for Dad might not be as bad as we think and we need to just wait and see what God brings about in the days ahead.  It glorifies God if we wait patiently and trust Him and take each day as it comes and don’t jump to the worst conclusion.

We have also heard this morning from our special friend who is a doctor, that he has seen many patients with cancer in the kidneys who have lived and functioned quite well with just part of a kidney for many more years.

Please pray for Dad and Mom (Bob and Jan Bagley) through these next days and weeks as they wait to see the Urologist and face many unknowns. And pray for direction for us and for my younger brother and sister and our children, as we all go through this and deal with this in our own ways. Pray that we will glorify God through this time of Dad’s cancer and recognize all the amazing facets of God’s incredible love and provision.  

At this stage we are planning on returning to the Philippines as planned in 3 weeks time and shortly afterwards, I hope to make a trip to Australia (Probably in March) to see Dad and Mom and may need to make a couple of trips during the year. Paul and Jubab will probably remain in Lapoc during that time and Jubab will continue with his school there.

At the end of the year it will be 4 years since we were in Australia and we will be returning to Australia for home assignment and this may be a good thing that we can be closer to Dad and Mom and be a help to them through this time.

We very much need your prayers – this year’s journey is looking like it may hold many mountains to climb and many rough patches of road to travel and we need to hold tighter than ever to our Lord’s hand.